Commitment to Diversity.
All-boys. Privileged. Private. There is no doubt our school is a bubble, and that I was raised in that bubble. The first step to covering everybody is acknowledging we live in that bubble. The next is to immerse ourselves in other communities, finding stories and learning lessons we can’t in our own. I do this by not only covering diversity for The ReMarker but also by being involved in programs whose main goal is to promote diversity. From this, I learned lessons that carry into every aspect of my life.
CISV - what it is
An international peace camp is the easy way to describe it, if there is an easy way. CISV gathers kids from around the world and brings them into a camp setting, where they take part in activities to learn about each other’s cultures. I have been involved as a participant and as a junior counselor, and have brought a lot of the lessons learned to my journalism experiences. Below is a column about the organization, focusing on a popular activity:
70 people. 15 different nations represented. Thousands of miles traveled to a central location. And a ton of preconceived notions. Walking into a month-long international camp, this is what I was thrust into.
In the first few days of a Children’s International Summer Villages (CISV) camp, one starts to form friendships with participants from other countries, albeit hesitantly. Then comes the poster activity.
All staff, leaders, junior counselors and participants from the same country gather. Every five minutes, a poster comes to the group with a new name on top. Indonesia. Sweden. Colombia. Now, those preconceived notions surface. Whatever comes to mind about a country – one writes down on its poster.
Finally, after a delegation has done this for every country in the camp, the group sees what the other participants wrote about its own country.
At my camp, this resulted in laughs for some. Italy - pizza and pasta. Sweden - blonde hair and blue eyes. No doubt stereotypes, but relatively “harmless”.
For other groups, though, there was not a smile in sight. Germany - World War II. Colombia - cartel. And the USA, the country I had grown up being taught was the greatest in the world, had the following on its poster:
“Hates immigrants”
“School shootings”
“Discriminates against own citizens”
Each country’s delegation had the opportunity to speak on how they felt about their poster, and tears flowed for many. It was clear whatever friendships were formed in the first few days would change.
From that point forward, each person made a conscious effort to see an individual’s character instead of one’s background. And by the end of the camp, my judgments about other nation’s citizens were wiped out, and I sincerely believe everyone else saw the USA a little differently, too.
Focus magazine
I have been a major contributor for the Focus magazine: planning cycles, writing and editing stories and designing pages. While we can cover major diversity topics in the paper, topics that deserve 28 pages make the cut for Focus. I am extremely proud of the progress Focus has made in the last few years, and I have attached a link to the family magazine we produced. This magazine covers families with LGBTQ+ parents, families new to America, and so much more.